Tag: Tattoo Magic universe

Holiday weekends and holiday weeks are always hard. In good news, I got to spend a lot of time with my family! In bad news, I didn’t get very much writing done.

The first story in the short story series is Done with a capital “D,” though I’ll probably give it one final read before I launch the project. The second story is a bit more problematic. I’ve discovered that it needs quite a bit of work as I’m reading it through, which is kind of discouraging, but I plan on plugging away at that this coming week.

As with everything writing-related, things tend to take longer than I think they will. It’s taken me about two weeks to get one story from drafted to what I consider reader ready. That said: the first of the Tattoo Magic stories is reader ready and off to my proofreader (Jared). I’ve also spent a good amount of time putting work into my Patreon page. It’s not live yet, but I want it to be ready for launch when I need it.

I’ve finished four stories of the initial five that I want to have set up as my buffer for my Patreon project. Then I need to revise these stories until they shine, and do some research on Patreon in general, and I’ll be ready to launch. To reiterate, this is the short story project cataloguing the rise, misuse, and fall of a magic system in a secondary-world fantasy setting.

Cue (more) heavy breathing.

This entire thing is making me apprehensive, much more so than my usual querying apprehension. I think it’s because it’s such an unknown. I have to keep reminding myself that this is an experiment, and it’s okay if it doesn’t work out, even if I’m not entirely sure what ‘working out’ looks like.

Since I’ve made progress to the point where I feel like I should be setting a deadline to be done with editing and so on, my personal, non-binding goal to launch is April 1.

Thanks to a writer-friend inviting me to write once a week at a coffee shop, and another writer-friend having a February writing sprint, I’m now done with three short-story rough drafts for the Tattoo Magic Patreon project. Whee!

I’m currently embroiled in a writing sprint, which is exactly where I need to be in terms of getting stuff ready for my Tattoo Magic Universe project. I’m mostly working on rough-drafting the first few stories, so that I can revise those and get going on the project. I’m torn between being anxious that it won’t be successful and having no idea how to define to myself what successful will look like.

It’s just something I want to do to show myself that I can do it: my little adventure into self-pub. But I want to make money on it to validate to myself that my art has value. And then I want to give some of that money to other queer artists because we need all the support we can get right now.

So far, I’ve modified one entire story to fit into the universe. It always wanted to be in the universe, but it lacked that little extra kick of connection. I’ve moved two stories over (both of which were already set in this setting, but before I had a firm idea of what the setting really WAS), and I’m about 2/3 through drafting the first or second story.

I figure when I have the first four or five stories in the arc good to go, it will be time to actually seriously start that Patreon thing. That would give me four or five months of buffer, which should be good enough to keep the project going even if I don’t have everything drafted out in advance.

I’m also looking at revamping my website and turning it into more of an author website with a blog than a blog about writing. I might do that today or Sunday, or I might push it back until next week. Stay tuned!

It’s been a hard week to focus on writing, but I did make some progress worldbuilding and thinking on my (probably) Patreon short-story project. Namely, I’ve worked on the magic system, created a syllabary and some language/grammar rules that were necessary for naming conventions, and drawn a preliminary setting map.

I’m not yet decided on whether I’ll post finished but unrelated stories in the meanwhile. That’s kind of a tougher decision than I thought it would be.

This weekend will be busy with real-life stuff, but I intend to take the time to draw a more official setting map with my Wacom tablet. Then comes the fun part of creating borders and the notes that go along with them.

I’ve also decided on the project format. Instead of just doing an array of short stories in this setting, as I initially planned, I’d like the stories to themselves tell the story of the setting. Think World War Z. So I will have to invest some initial time into loosely plotting out the stories and how I’d like them to connect.

The result will be that the Patreon project will have a delayed launch, but I think in the end, it will be more satisfying this way.